A decade worth of touring and the “alienating experience” of performing influenced Roger Waters when he wrote Pink Floyd‘s The Wall.
The veteran musician confirmed that the shows played out to large audiences between 1975 and 1977 were a major influence in writing one of their highly regarded studio albums. The Wall was released in November 1979 and was an “expression of those feelings” Pink Floyd had when playing to an audience on bigger stages. Waters confirmed the “wall between us and our audience” is what he had first wanted to get at with the album, suggesting the “very difficult” performances the band gave was a source of inspiration. In an interview given in 1979, Waters confirmed the album’s origins and also suggested it was hard to make a connection between audience and performer in large shows.
Waters said of the origins of The Wall: “The idea for The Wall came from ten years of touring, rock shows, I think, particularly the last few years in ’75 and ’77 we were playing to very large audiences, some of whom were our old audience who’d come to see us play, but most of whom were only there for the beer, in big stadiums, and, consequently it became rather an alienating experience doing the shows.
“I became very conscious of a wall between us and our audience, and so this record started out as being an expression of those feelings. The story has been developed considerably since then, this was two years ago [1977], I started to write it, and now it’s partly about a live show situation.
“In fact, the album starts off in a live show, and then it flashes back and traces a story of a character, if you like of Pink himself, whoever he may be. But initially, it just stemmed from shows being horrible.”
Waters went on to call the live show experiences in stadiums across the globe as “alienating” as he and the band found it hard to connect with their audience.
He added: “There is an idea, or there has been an idea for many years abroad that it’s a very uplifting and wonderful experience and that there’s a great contact between the audience and the performers on the stage and I think that that is not true, I think there’ve been very many cases. It’s actually a rather alienating experience.”
Earlier in the interview, Waters suggested playing large tour dates were a “wonderful time” but was a situation created through the greed of the band.
He added: “…it’s very difficult to perform under those situations with screaming and shouting and throwing things and hitting each other and crashing about and letting off fireworks and you know?
“I mean, having a wonderful time, but it’s a drag to try and play when all that’s going on. I felt at the same time that it was a situation we’d created ourselves through our own greed, you know, if you play very large venues…the only real reason for playing large venues is to make money.”
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